Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo
Buonarroti
(March 6, 1475 - February 18, 1564) was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, poet
and architect. He is famous for creating the fresco ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
one of the most stupendous works in all of Western art, as well as the Last Judgment
over the altar, and "The Martyrdom of St. Peter" and "The Conversion of St. Paul"
in the Vatican's Capella Paolina; among his many sculptures are those of the Pieta
and David, again, sublime masterpieces of their field, as well as the Virgin,
Bacchus, Moses, Rachel, Leah, and members of the Medici family (see article for
more information on them); he also designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

Life History

Michelagnolo
di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6th, 1475, in Caprese,
Tuscany, Italy. Michelangelo's father, Lodovico, was the resident magistrate in
Caprese. However, Michelangelo was raised in Florence and later lived with a sculptor
and his wife in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry
and a small farm.

Against
his father's wishes, Michelangelo chose to be the apprentice of Domenico Ghirlandaio
for three years starting in 1488. Impressed, Domenico recommended him to the ruler
of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended Lorenzo's
school and during his stay, Michelangelo would be influenced by many prominent
people who modified and expanded his ideas on art and even his feelings about
sexuality. It was during this period that Michelangelo created two reliefs: Battle
of the Centaurs and Madonna of the Steps.

After
the death of Lorenzo in 1492, Piero de' Medici (Lorenzo's oldest son and new head
of the Medici family), refused to support Michelangelo' artwork. Also at this
time, the ideas of Savonarola became popular in Florence. Under these two pressures,
Michelangelo decided to leave Florence and stay in Bologna for three years. Soon
afterwards, Cardinal San Giorgio purchased Michelangelo's marble Cupid
and decided to summon him to Rome in 1496. Influenced by Roman antiquity, he produced
the Bacchus and the Pietŕ.

Four
years later, Michelangelo returned to Florence where he produced arguably his
most famous work, the marble David. He also painted the Holy Family
of the Tribune.

Pieta.Carved c.1498 when Michelangelo
was 23 years old. The statue is six feet (180 cm) high.

Michelangelo
was summoned back to Rome in 1503 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II and was
commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. However, under the patronage of Julius
II, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish
numerous other tasks. The most famous of which was the monumental paintings on
the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel which took four years (1508 - 1512).
Due to these and later interruptions, Michelangelo would work on the tomb for
40 years without ever finishing it.

In
1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned
Michelangelo to reconstruct the exterior of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence
and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly, but was unable
to accomplish this feat (the church's exterior is unadorned to this day).

In
1527, the Florentine citicens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici
and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo came to
the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528
to 1529. The city fell in 1530 and the Medici were restored to power.

The
fresco of the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was
commissioned by Pope Paul III and Michelangelo worked on it from 1534 to 1541.
Then in 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in
the Vatican. Michelangelo was architect from 1546 - 1564. On
February 18th, 1564, Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 89. His life was
described in Giorgio Vasari's "Vite".

Controversy,
Censorship and the 'Fig-Leaf Campaign'

When
the work was finished on the Last Judgment in (October 1541), Michelangelo
was accused of intolerable obscenity for his depictions of naked figures showing
genitals (and inside a church, and in St.Peter's, the most important one). A violent
censorship campaign was organized by Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's
ambassador) to remove the frescoes, but the Pope resisted.

In
coincidence with Michelangelo's death, a law was issued to cover genitals ("Pictura
in Cappella Ap.ca coopriantur"). So Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of
Michelangelo, covered with sort of perizomas (briefs) the genitals, leaving unaltered
the complex of bodies (see details [1]). When the work was restored in 1993, the
restorers chose not to remove the perizomas of Daniele; however, a faithful uncensored
copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is now in Naples, at the Capodimonte
Museum.

Censorship
always followed Michelangelo, once described as "inventor delle porcherie" (inventor
of obscenities, in a sense that in Italian sounds like he had created genitals).

The "fig-leaf campaign"
of the Counter Reformation to cover all representations of human genitals in paintings
and sculptures started with Michelangelo's works. To give two examples, the bronze
statue of "Cristo della Minerva" was covered, as it remains today, and the statue
of the naked child Jesus in "Madonna of Bruges" (Belgium) remained covered for
several decades. A similar campaign occurred in Victorian Britain.

Michelangelo the Man

Michelangelo,
who was often arrogant with others and constantly unsatisfied with himself, thought
that art originated from inner inspiration and from culture. In contradiction
to the ideas of his rival, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo saw nature as an enemy
that had to be overcome. The figures that he created are therefore in forceful
movement; each is in its own space apart from the outside world. For Michelangelo,
the job of the sculptor is to free the forms that, he believed, were already inside
the stone. This can most vividly be seen in his unfinished statuary figures, which
to many appear to be struggling to free themselves from the stone.

He
also instilled into his figures a sense of moral cause for action. A good example
of this can be seen in the facial expression of his marble statue David.
Arguably his second most famous work (after David) is the fresco on the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel which is a synthesis of architecture, sculpture
& painting. His Last Judgement, also in the Sistine Chapel, is a depiction
of extreme crisis.

Several
anecdotes reveal that Michelangelo's skill, especially in sculpture, was deeply
appreciated in his own time. It is said that when still a young apprentice, he
had made a neoclassical statue (Il Putto Dormiente, the sleeping child)
of such beauty and perfection, that it was later sold in Rome as an ancient Roman
original. Another better-known anecdote claims that when finishing the Moses (Rome,
San Pietro in Vincoli), Michelangelo violently hit the knee of the statue with
a hammer, shouting, "Why don't you speak to me?"

Fundamental
to Michelangelo's art is his love of male beauty, which attracted him both aesthetically,
and emotionally. Such feelings caused him great anguish, and he expressed the
struggle between platonic ideals and carnal desire in his sculpture, drawing and
poetry.

Michelangelo
developed a romantic but apparently non-sexual relationship with at least one
man, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, who was 23 years old when they met in 1532. This infatuation
caused Michelangelo to write a series of sonnets.

The
homoeroticism of Michelangelo's poetry was obscured when his grand nephew, Michelangelo
the Younger, published an edition of the poetry in 1623 with the gender of pronouns
changed. John Addington Symonds undid this change by translating the original
sonnets into English and writing a two-volume biography, published in 1893.

Further Reading

Umberto Baldini, (photography
Liberto Perugi), The Sculpture of Michelangelo (Rizzoli, 1982) is an
excellent work with many fine photos, all in black and white, though